Why didn’t you answer your phone.

I took a slow sip of my wine and set it down on its coaster.

I was taking a quiet ride home, I said.

Is something wrong?

Is something wrong, he repeated, as though the words were absurd, and then it all came out of him in a rush.

They had brought a check to the table for two thousand three hundred dollars.

I had paid for my own salad and walked out.